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WASHINGTON - The hunt for Osama bin Laden took nearly a decade. It could take even longer to uncover U.S. government emails, planning reports, photographs and more that would shed light on how an elite team of Navy SEALs killed the world's most wanted terrorist.

Ten months after that electrifying covert mission, an administration that has pledged to be the most transparent in American history is refusing to release documents about it under the Freedom of Information Act. The records could provide insights into how bin Laden died, how the U.S. verified his identity and how it decided to bury him at sea, as well as photographs taken during and after the May 2011 raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Government officials have openly discussed details of the mission in speeches, interviews and television appearances, but the administration won't disclose records that would confirm their narrative of that fateful night. The Obama administration has not said even where in Washington's bureaucracy all the documents might be stored.

Requests for bin Laden materials were among the most significant of any filed last year under the open records law, which compels the government to turn over copies of federal records for free or at little cost. Anyone who seeks information under the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making. The law has been the focus of extra attention since Sunday, the start of Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information.

Citing the law, The Associated Press asked for files about the raid in more than 20 separate requests, mostly submitted the day after bin Laden's death. The Pentagon told the AP this month it could not locate any photographs or video taken during the raid or showing bin Laden's body. It also said it could not find any images of bin Laden's body on the Navy aircraft carrier where the al-Qaida leader's body was taken.

The Pentagon said it could not find any death certificate, autopsy report or results of DNA identification tests for bin Laden, or any pre-raid materials discussing how the government planned to dispose of bin Laden's body if he were killed. It said it searched files at the Pentagon, U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and the Navy command in San Diego that controls the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier used in the mission.

The Defense Department told the AP in late February it could not find any emails about the bin Laden mission or his "Geronimo" code name that were sent or received in the year before the raid by William McRaven, the three-star admiral at the Joint Special Operations Command who organized and oversaw the mission. It also could not find any emails from other senior officers who would have been involved in the mission's planning. It found only three such emails written by or sent to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and these consisted of 12 pages sent to Gates summarizing news reports after the raid.

Under the FOIA, even if a document contains secrets about national security, the government can censor those passages but must release anything else in the document that is "reasonably segregable."

The information blackout means that the only public accounts of the mission come from U.S. officials who have described details of that night. In the hours and days after bin Laden's death, the White House provided conflicting versions of events, falsely saying that bin Laden was armed and even firing at the SEALs, misidentifying which of bin Laden's sons was killed, and incorrectly saying bin Laden's wife died in the shootout. President Barack Obama's press secretary attributed the errors to the "fog of combat."

Since then, no authoritative or contemporaneous records have been made available. For the Obama administration, the book on bin Laden appears to be closed.

The Pentagon is refusing even to confirm or deny the existence of helicopter maintenance logs and reports about the performance of military gear used in the raid. One of the stealth helicopters that carried the SEALs to Abbottabad crashed during the mission and its wreckage was left behind. People who lived near bin Laden's compound took photos of the disabled chopper as it straddled one of the high walls surrounding the building. The photos showed a unique tail rotor that aviation experts said was designed to avoid radar detection.

On the AP's request for the helicopter records and equipment reports, the Defense Department invoked what is known as a "Glomar response." The reference dates to the 1970s when the CIA refused to confirm or deny the existence of the Glomar Explorer, a ship the agency used in the attempted salvage of a sunken Soviet submarine.

The AP is appealing the Defense Department's decision. The CIA, which ran the bin Laden raid and has special legal authority to keep information from ever being made public, still has not responded to AP's request for records about the mission.

The CIA has photographs of video recordings of bin Laden taken during the operation. In the days after the raid, select U.S. lawmakers were invited to visit a secure room at CIA headquarters to view more than a dozen of the images, including pictures of bin Laden's body. They were not allowed to take copies of the photos back to Capitol Hill.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he viewed one photo that showed brain matter coming out of bin Laden's eye socket. Inhofe said others were taken as the body was being prepared for burial at sea and were less jarring. He said Thursday that he favors making at least a few of the less graphic photos public to dispel any doubts that bin Laden is dead.

"There are probably still people out there who don't think he was killed," Inhofe said.

Federal courts consistently have upheld the government's use of the Glomar response, which is different from refusing to disclose materials. Citing Glomar often happens in national security cases or is used to protect an individual's privacy. It's a tough legal claim to beat in court.

The former director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy, Dan Metcalfe, said the Pentagon overplayed its position. Citing Glomar in AP's case means the fact that the military performs maintenance on helicopters or that it prepares reports about weapons performance is itself classified, he said. The Pentagon's claim is so broad that it "collapses of its own weight," Metcalfe said.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, has sued the administration in federal court to force the release of photos and video of bin Laden. The AP has not sued to force the government to turn over the broader range of materials it has requested.

In the Judicial Watch lawsuit, federal officials acknowledged that the CIA has more than 50 photographs and video recordings of bin Laden's body taken after the raid and during his burial at sea. The director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, John Bennett, said in a court declaration last year that many of the photographs and video recordings are "quite graphic, as they depict the fatal bullet wound to (bin Laden) and other similarly gruesome images of his corpse."

Judicial Watch has disputed the Obama administration's argument that American personnel and secrets will be at risk if the images are released. It called the concern over violence against Americans stationed overseas "hypothetical speculation" and said it is hard to understand how a photo of bin Laden being buried at sea would expose sensitive equipment or personnel.

The U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees the Navy SEALs and other commando units, keeps tight rein on information about their equipment, training and missions. In August 2007, it denied a request by the AP for an internal report on the Battle of Mogadishu, a military operation in Somalia in October 1993 that cost 18 American troops their lives.

The command told AP that the report was still classified, even though the battle, better known as "Black Hawk Down," was the subject of books, a movie and countless military studies. Under AP's appeal, the command eventually released a copy with all but nine of the 73 pages completely blacked out. Most of the information remains secret, the command said, to protect military plans, weapon systems and the privacy of individuals involved.

In other cases, the government has revealed more. Just four months after Operation Eagle Claw, the failed attempt in 1980 to rescue 53 U.S. hostages in Iran, the Pentagon released an unclassified version of an investigation about what went wrong. The forward to the 87-page report noted the importance of providing as much detail as possible to the American public.

More recently, the National Security Archive, a private research institute at George Washington University, waited three years for the government to hand over records describing the military's initial plans for invading Iraq. A series of slides, prepared under the codename Polo Step, showed that war planners believed in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq by December 2006.

U.S. files on Bin Laden raid purged from Pentagon computers for secrecy: report
Navy Vice Adm. William McRaven has ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA.

WASHINGTON -- The nation's top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the Freedom of Information Act.

An acknowledgement by Adm. William McRaven of his actions was quietly removed from the final version of an inspector general's report published weeks ago. A spokesman for the admiral declined to comment. The CIA, noting that the bin Laden mission was overseen by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta before he became defense secretary, said that the SEALs were effectively assigned to work temporarily for the CIA, which has presidential authority to conduct covert operations.

"Documents related to the raid were handled in a manner consistent with the fact that the operation was conducted under the direction of the CIA director," agency spokesman Preston Golson said in an emailed statement. "Records of a CIA operation such as the (bin Laden) raid, which were created during the conduct of the operation by persons acting under the authority of the CIA Director, are CIA records."

Golson said it is "absolutely false" that records were moved to the CIA to avoid the legal requirements of the Freedom of Information Act.

The records transfer was part of an effort by McRaven to protect the names of the personnel involved in the raid, according to the inspector general's draft report.

But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated Press that it couldn't find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested more than two years ago, and could represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny.

"Welcome to the shell game in place of open government," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private research institute at George Washington University. "Guess which shell the records are under. If you guess the right shell, we might show them to you. It's ridiculous."

McRaven's directive sent the only copies of the military's records about its daring raid to the CIA, which has special authority to prevent the release of "operational files" in ways that can't effectively be challenged in federal court. The Defense Department can prevent the release of its own military files, too, citing risks to national security. But that can be contested in court, and a judge can compel the Pentagon to turn over non-sensitive portions of records.

Under federal rules, transferring government records from one executive agency to another must be approved in writing by the National Archives and Records Administration. There are limited circumstances when prior approval is not required, such as when the records are moved between two components of the same executive department. The CIA and Special Operations Command are not part of the same department.

The Archives was not aware of any request from the U.S. Special Operations Command to transfer its records to the CIA, spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said. She said it was the Archives' understanding that the military records belonged to the CIA, so transferring them wouldn't have required permission under U.S. rules.

Special Operations Command also is required to comply with rules established by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that dictate how long records must be retained. Its July 2012 manual requires that records about military operations and planning are to be considered permanent and after 25 years, following a declassification review, transferred to the Archives.

Also, the Federal Records Act would not permit agencies "to purge records just on a whim," said Dan Metcalfe, who oversaw the U.S. government's compliance with the Freedom of Information Act as former director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy. "I don't think there's an exception allowing an agency to say, `Well, we didn't destroy it. We just deleted it here after transmitting it over there.' High-level officials ought to know better."

It was not immediately clear exactly which Defense Department records were purged and transferred, when it happened or under what authority, if any, they were sent to the CIA. No government agencies the AP contacted would discuss details of the transfer. The timing may be significant: The Freedom of Information Act generally applies to records under an agency's control when a request for them is received. The AP asked for files about the mission in more than 20 separate requests, mostly submitted in May 2011 – several were sent a day after Obama announced that the world's most wanted terrorist had been killed in a firefight. Obama has pledged to make his administration the most transparent in U.S. history.

The AP asked the Defense Department and CIA separately for files that included copies of the death certificate and autopsy report for bin Laden as well as the results of tests to identify the body. While the Pentagon said it could not locate the files, the CIA, with its special power to prevent the release of records, has never responded. The CIA also has not responded to a separate request for other records, including documents identifying and describing the forces and supplies required to execute the assault on bin Laden's compound.

The CIA did tell the AP it could not locate any emails from or to Panetta and two other top agency officials discussing the bin Laden mission.

Navy Vice Adm. William McRaven has ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

McRaven's unusual order would have remained secret had it not been mentioned in a single sentence on the final page in the inspector general's draft report that examined whether the Obama administration gave special access to Hollywood executives planning a film, "Zero Dark Thirty," about the raid. The draft report was obtained and posted online last month by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington.

McRaven, who oversaw the bin Laden raid, expressed concerns in the report about possible disclosure of the identities of the SEALs. The Pentagon "provided the operators and their families an inordinate level of security," the report said. McRaven also directed that the names and photographs associated with the raid not be released.

"This effort included purging the combatant command's systems of all records related to the operation and providing these records to another government agency," according to the draft report. The sentence was dropped from the report's final version.

Since the raid, one of the SEALs published a book about the raid under a pseudonym but was subsequently identified by his actual name. And earlier this year the SEAL credited with shooting bin Laden granted a tell-all, anonymous interview with Esquire about the raid and the challenges of his retiring from the military after 16 years without a pension.

Current and former Defense Department officials knowledgeable about McRaven's directive and the inspector general's report told AP the description of the order in the draft report was accurate. The reference to "another government agency" was code for the CIA, they said. These individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter by name.

There is no indication the inspector general's office or anyone else in the U.S. government is investigating the legality of transferring the military records. Bridget Serchak, a spokeswoman for the inspector general, would not explain why the reference was left out of the final report and what, if any, actions the office might be taking.

"Our general statement is that any draft is pre-decisional and that drafts go through many reviews before the final version, including editing or changing language," Serchak wrote in an email.

The unexplained decision to remove the reference to the purge and transfer of the records "smells of bad faith," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "How should one understand that? That adds insult to injury. It essentially covers up the action."

McRaven oversaw the raid while serving as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, the secretive outfit in charge of SEAL Team Six and the military's other specialized counterterrorism units. McRaven was nominated by Obama to lead Special Operations Command, JSOC's parent organization, a month before the raid on bin Laden's compound. He replaced Adm. Eric Olson as the command's top officer in August 2011.

Ken McGraw, a spokesman for Special Operations Command, referred questions to the inspector general's office.

The refusal to make available authoritative or contemporaneous records about the bin Laden mission means that the only official accounts of the mission come from U.S. officials who have described details of the raid in speeches, interviews and television appearances. In the days after bin Laden's death, the White House provided conflicting versions of events, falsely saying bin Laden was armed and even firing at the SEALs, misidentifying which of bin Laden's sons was killed and incorrectly saying bin Laden's wife died in the shootout. Obama's press secretary attributed the errors to the "fog of combat."

A U.S. judge and a federal appeals court previously sided with the CIA in a lawsuit over publishing more than 50 "post-mortem" photos and video recordings of bin Laden's corpse. In the case, brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, the CIA did not say the images were operational files to keep them secret. It argued successfully that the photos and videos must be withheld from the public to avoid inciting violence against Americans overseas and compromising secret systems and techniques used by the CIA and the military.

The Defense Department told the AP in March 2012 it could not locate any photographs or video taken during the raid or showing bin Laden's body. It also said it could not find any images of bin Laden's body on the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier from which he was buried at sea. The Pentagon also said it could not find any death certificate, autopsy report or results of DNA identification tests for bin Laden, or any pre-raid materials discussing how the government planned to dispose of bin Laden's body if he were killed. It said it searched files at the Pentagon, Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and the Navy command in San Diego that controls the Carl Vinson.

The Pentagon also refused to confirm or deny the existence of helicopter maintenance logs and reports about the performance of military gear used in the raid. One of the stealth helicopters that carried the SEALs in Pakistan crashed during the mission and its wreckage was left behind.

The Defense Department also told the AP in February 2012 that it could not find any emails about the bin Laden mission or his "Geronimo" code name that were sent or received in the year before the raid by McRaven. The department did not say they had been moved to the CIA. It also said it could not find any emails from other senior officers who would have been involved in the mission's planning. It found only three such emails written by or sent to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and these consisted of 12 pages sent to Gates summarizing news reports after the raid.

The Defense Department in November 2012 released copies of 10 emails totaling 31 pages found in the Carl Vinson's computer systems. The messages were heavily censored and described how bin Laden's body was prepared for burial.

These records were not among those purged and then moved to the CIA. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory said the messages from the Carl Vinson "were not relating to the mission itself and were the property of the Navy."

WASHINGTON (AP) - Secret budget documents show that a U.S. military laboratory in Afghanistan analyzed DNA from Osama bin Laden's corpse and confirmed his identify shortly after he was killed by a Navy SEAL team.

The Pentagon denied more than a year ago it had any records of these tests in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Associated Press a day after President Barack Obama announced bin Laden's death.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that classified intelligence budget files provided by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden state that a forensic intelligence laboratory run by the Defense Intelligence Agency performed the DNA testing. The Post reported that the tests "provided a conclusive match."

The AP's request for records submitted on May 2, 2011, included DNA and facial recognition tests performed to ensure the body was bin Laden's, all videos and photographs taken during the raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the death certificate and other records related to the mission.

In a March 2012 response, the Defense Department said it could not locate any of the files.

The AP reported in July that the nation's top special operations commander, Adm. William McRaven, had ordered military files about the raid purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they more easily could be shielded from ever being made public.

The secret move appeared to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps the Freedom of Information Act as well. The CIA has special authority to prevent the release of "operational files" in ways that can't effectively be challenged in federal court.

Spokesmen for the Pentagon and CIA denied the move was intended to avoid the legal requirements of the FOIA. The bin Laden mission was overseen by the CIA, they said, which meant the records about the raid should be housed with the spy agency.

The CIA has not responded to a separate request for many of the same records about the bin Laden mission the Pentagon said it could not find.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to order the release of photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse and burial at sea, leaving intact the CIA’s classification of those images as top-secret.

The justices today turned away an appeal by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that filed a Freedom of Information Act suit seeking release of the 2011 photos. A lower court ruled that the classification of the images was proper.

The Obama administration and Central Intelligence Agency said release of the photos would damage national security by inflaming tensions overseas and leading to retaliatory attacks against Americans.

The lawsuit involved 52 images of bin Laden after he was killed during a raid by U.S. special operations forces on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011. President Barack Obama said in 2011 that the photos were “very graphic.”

Judicial Watch contended that many of the images could be released without exacerbating tensions, including those depicting the preparation of the body for burial and the burial itself.

Eleven days after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, the US military's top special operations officer ordered subordinates to destroy any photographs of the al-Qaida founder's corpse or turn them over to the CIA, according to a newly released email.

The email was obtained under a freedom of information request by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch. The document, released on Monday by the group, shows that Admiral William McRaven, who heads the US Special Operations Command, told military officers on 13 May 2011 that photos of Bin Laden's remains should have been sent to the CIA or already destroyed. Bin Laden was killed by a special ops team in Pakistan on 2 May 2011.

McRaven's order to purge the bin Laden material came 10 days after the Associated Press asked for the photos and other documents under the US Freedom of Information Act. Typically, when a freedom of information request is filed to a government agency under the Federal Records Act, the agency is obliged to preserve the material sought – even if the agency later denies the request.

On 3 May 2011, the AP asked Special Operations Command's Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Division office for "copies of all e-mails sent from and to the U.S. government account or accounts" of McRaven referencing bin Laden. McRaven was then vice-admiral.

A response on 4 May 2011 from the command's FOIA office to the AP acknowledged the Bin Laden document request and said it had been assigned for processing. AP did not receive a copy of the McRaven email obtained by Judicial Watch.

The Department of Defense FOIA office told the AP in a 29 February 2012 letter that it could find no McRaven emails "responsive to your request" for communications about the bin Laden material.

The Special Operations Command is required to comply with rules established by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff that dictate how long records must be retained. Its July 2012 manual requires that records about military operations and planning are to be considered permanent and after 25 years, following a declassification review, transferred to the National Archives.

Last July, a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general first disclosed McRaven's secret order, but the reference was not contained in the inspector general's final report. The email that surfaced on Monday was the first evidence showing the actual order.

In a heavily blacked-out email addressed to "gentlemen", McRaven told his unnamed subordinates: "One particular item that I want to emphasise is photos; particularly UBLs remains. At this point – all photos should have been turned over to the CIA; if you still have them destroy them immediately or get them" a blacked-out location. UBL refers to Bin Laden.

At the time the inspector general's report came out, a spokesman for the Special Operations Command referred questions back to the inspector general.

A CIA spokesman said at the time that "documents related to the raid were handled in a manner consistent with the fact that the operation was conducted under the direction of the CIA director", then Leon Panetta. The CIA statement also said "records of a CIA operation such as the raid, which were created during the conduct of the operation by persons acting under the authority of the CIA director, are CIA records".

In a letter on 31 January this year to Judicial Watch in response to its request for all records relating to McRaven's "directive to purge", the Pentagon's office of general counsel said it had been able to locate only document – Raven's redacted email.

The Judicial Watch president, Tom Fitton, said on Monday the email "is a smoking gun, revealing both contempt for the rule of law and the American people's right to know".

WASHINGTON (KABC) -- Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden end any doubt that Osama bin Laden could still be alive.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that secret budget files provided by Snowden show that a U.S. military lab in Afghanistan analyzed DNA from bin Laden's body and confirmed his identity shortly after he was killed. The test results were "a conclusive match," the Post said.

The Pentagon denied more than a year ago it had any records of these tests in a Freedom of Information Act request by the Associated Press.

Bin Laden was killed by a Navy SEAL team at his Pakistan hideout in May 2011.